Author Interview: Tony Thorne MBE

Self Published Authors is proud to introduce a new, amazingly fascinating, Tony Thorne MBE.  Take a look at his author bio to read about Tony’s life story.  He’s got years of experience that I feel you will greatly benefit from by following Tony’s website!

Author Name: Tony Thorne MBE

Book Title: TENERIFE TALL TALES Volume 1

Book Price: $12.95 paperback, $ 5.70 eBook version. – but less in some outlets.

Where can your book be purchased? Amazon Books, B & N, WH Smith, Createspace, Smashwords etc.

Book Description: Seventeen tall SF, Fantasy & Macabre Tales, set in, around and even under, that magical Canary Island where anything can happen and often does!

Book Review:  An exotic island, one of the Canary Islands, Tenerife certainly seems like an appropriate place for adventure. And when a scientist and design engineer with a taste for Science Fiction decides to set his speculative tall tales there, amazing adventures do, indeed, ensue.  Set, for the most part, in the near future, the tales use very believable twists on emergent technology, sometimes ours and sometimes possibly from some other place entirely.

What Thorne creates on Tenerife is a world where the reader never knows what to expect under the sea, in caves, on the land and in the air. The island becomes, in various tales, a land where animals act as intelligently as humans, where attempts to handle environmental issues have very unexpected results, where exotic locations and experimental science create sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, and always amazing and utterly intriguing results.

Tony Thorne's grasp of the science that looms just over the horizon and his love for Science Fiction come together, in these stories, to create speculative fiction of the very best kind. – by Rhetta Akamatsu, USA
Please tell us a little about why you wrote this book: I’ve spent the last 13 winters in Tenerife, escaping  from chilly Austria.  I wanted to celebrate its varied and wonderful environment, by writing tall tales about what might happen in different locations there, all identified on a map in the book.

Which passage from your book is your personal favorite? I like this one:  I don’t remember my funeral but I recall thinking about it on waking up again this morning, or whenever it was.

But maybe this one more:  The professor examined the squeaking little creature closely. “I suspect there are several new species of dinosaurs in the MicroPark now.  They're hiding in the jungle and even when they come out occasionally, they’re too small for us to see them.  I don't think they are vegetarians. The bones we see now are picked clean and not broken at all, like we get with the larger predators.  These new ones must be smaller, maybe a lot smaller."

What makes your book stand out in the crowd?  I believe it is unique in its setting, with an introduction by the legendary SF author Harry Harrison, and it was the SF category winner in the 2009 New York ‘Best Read on the Beach’ Festival contest.

How long have you been a writer? My first story was published in NEBULA Science Fiction, back in 1952.

What has your experience been as a self-published author?  Since 2007, fascinating, but I find the promotional side takes far more time than the actual writing.

Do you have another book on the way that we can look forward to reading? Yes, Volume 2 in the Tenerife Tall Tales trilogy has just been published and volume 3 will follow later on this year.

Do you have any advice for people wanting to self-publish?  It’s all uphill, but keep at it, and never give up.

Please tell us a little about your other books that are available: From the 18 odd titles  currently featured on my website - www.tonythorne.com  there’s  Macabre Tales, Robots Included, Tall SF Tales for Teenagers, How to be a Chief Executive (satire),  Inside Information (comedy), Spellbound (fantasy).

Author Bio: I am an Englishman, born and technically educated in London, England, and now living in Austria; but in the winter, in the warmer Canary Island of Tenerife. I originally qualified as a Chartered Design Engineer and subsequently created a well-known British company specialising in Applied Physics products.  For developments in the field of low temperature (cryo)surgery instruments, and very high temperature (carbon fibre) processing furnaces, the Queen awarded me an MBE.

Earlier in life I also wrote and sold some science-fiction and humorous stories, was an active SF Fan, and a spare time lecturer for the British Interplanetary Society.  I have since written and published poetry, plus papers and articles for several technical publications.  After many subsequent business adventures, including the development of AI computer software for business applications, and animated computer graphics set to music, I now write quirky speculative yarns; mostly Science Fiction and Macabre tales, with a novel and over 100 short stories on file.

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